Hah, I was thinking along the same lines as you—I have two pieces of advice that I give to everyone, that would solve most of their problems, at that nobody ever takes: meditate daily, and read the goddamn Sequences. So naturally, I’m gonna write up my own, heavily condensed version of the Sequences, and then my friends will have to read them because it’s rude not to read something if your friend wrote it (right?)
My version will sit in my brain for at least a few more years, potentially forever, but I did take a few notes on structure at least. I thought I’d dump them here because they might be of interest to you (?) They might not be very legible, but they’re for my own consumption mostly, I’m dumping them as-is just to give an idea what I found important in the Sequences (and elsewhere).
topics
introduction: something to protect
theoretical epistemology
probability, evidence, betting
bayesian inference
the importance of priors
privileging the hypothesis
causality, causal relationship between reality and beliefs
ontology, what we mean by “real”
“supernatural”
how to use language, dissolving questions
predictions, expectations
human brains/neural nets
evolution, how to theorize about evolution (tooby & cosmides)
evopsych, the political mind
escaping the paradigm is impossible, but there’s some slack
moral psychology
brain, neural nets
all the GPT-2 shit
predictive processing and world models, memory
tinted lenses
wanting/liking/goals/values/motivation
the Self, identity
the press secretary, introspection
fake explanations (elan vital)
fake beliefs
the dragon in the garage
mental movements/habits
noticing
noticing confusion
noticing “makes sense”, armchair logic (e.g. 80k’s reasoning about how to have impact)
noticing resistance to ideas (e.g. [redacted personal example])
noticing already knowing in advance the conclusion (in a debate, as soon as your opponent opens their mouth, you know that there’s going to be something wrong with their argument)
noticing the pull to lash out in an argument with a loved one
commitment, identity, choosing which status game you play, leaving yourself/others a line of retreat
personality, character, mask, the web
philosophy case studies
chinese room, free will, teleportation/personal identity
footguns: “I am a rationalist, I couldn’t possibly be making trivial cognitive mistakes”, “all conspiracy theories are bullshit, I am smart”, “I am better than others because I am more rational and smarter”, “I know NVC, therefore I cannot get into dumb fights”, church of Rationality; isolated demands for rigor, the fallacy fallacy
remember there are underlying determinants of e.g. open-mindedness etc.
[interesting biases]
status quo
just/non-horrible universe
mind projection fallacy (e.g. “the meaning of life”)
I’m planning a somewhat similar project, but it’s going to be more about “Here are some good ideas I’ve heard”. I just am sad thinking that my formulations would be lost forever if I was hit by a bus instead of written down so that if any are useful they can be stolen and used.
Hah, I was thinking along the same lines as you—I have two pieces of advice that I give to everyone, that would solve most of their problems, at that nobody ever takes: meditate daily, and read the goddamn Sequences. So naturally, I’m gonna write up my own, heavily condensed version of the Sequences, and then my friends will have to read them because it’s rude not to read something if your friend wrote it (right?)
My version will sit in my brain for at least a few more years, potentially forever, but I did take a few notes on structure at least. I thought I’d dump them here because they might be of interest to you (?) They might not be very legible, but they’re for my own consumption mostly, I’m dumping them as-is just to give an idea what I found important in the Sequences (and elsewhere).
topics
introduction: something to protect
theoretical epistemology
probability, evidence, betting
bayesian inference
the importance of priors
privileging the hypothesis
causality, causal relationship between reality and beliefs
ontology, what we mean by “real”
“supernatural”
how to use language, dissolving questions
predictions, expectations
human brains/neural nets
evolution, how to theorize about evolution (tooby & cosmides)
evopsych, the political mind
escaping the paradigm is impossible, but there’s some slack
moral psychology
brain, neural nets
all the GPT-2 shit
predictive processing and world models, memory
tinted lenses
wanting/liking/goals/values/motivation
the Self, identity
the press secretary, introspection
fake explanations (elan vital)
fake beliefs
the dragon in the garage
mental movements/habits
noticing
noticing confusion
noticing “makes sense”, armchair logic (e.g. 80k’s reasoning about how to have impact)
noticing resistance to ideas (e.g. [redacted personal example])
noticing already knowing in advance the conclusion (in a debate, as soon as your opponent opens their mouth, you know that there’s going to be something wrong with their argument)
noticing the pull to lash out in an argument with a loved one
noticing when you do motte and bailey
feeling certainty (e.g. private property = good, taxes and coercion = bad)
being stuck in a loop (e.g. trying to get out of bed in a semi-dreamy state)
? suffering
practical epistemology (perception tinted by e.g. depression, fear, but mainly when you tie your Self to an ideology)
everything is a lens, there is no “lens-less” view
caching, normalization, prediction overrides perception ?
tracking debate propositions ?
scout mindset
practical topics
politics vs policy
ethics, consequentialism vs. other stances
goals and values vs. methods, goal factoring
beware grand unified theories
though experiments, double crux, counterfactual thinking
charity, compassion, empathy, we’re all in this together, kumbaya
“how would I end up with these beliefs/behavior?”
addressing the cases when extending charity is already an act of desertion
cooperative discussion
adversarial optimization: Russian bots, scammers, marketing, manufactured addiction, manufactured outrage
social dynamics; purity spirals; meta-norms
commitment, identity, choosing which status game you play, leaving yourself/others a line of retreat
personality, character, mask, the web
philosophy case studies
chinese room, free will, teleportation/personal identity
footguns: “I am a rationalist, I couldn’t possibly be making trivial cognitive mistakes”, “all conspiracy theories are bullshit, I am smart”, “I am better than others because I am more rational and smarter”, “I know NVC, therefore I cannot get into dumb fights”, church of Rationality; isolated demands for rigor, the fallacy fallacy
remember there are underlying determinants of e.g. open-mindedness etc.
[interesting biases]
status quo
just/non-horrible universe
mind projection fallacy (e.g. “the meaning of life”)
[practical considerations]
? read this book with other people, discuss
I’m planning a somewhat similar project, but it’s going to be more about “Here are some good ideas I’ve heard”. I just am sad thinking that my formulations would be lost forever if I was hit by a bus instead of written down so that if any are useful they can be stolen and used.